ED sub-light speed physics are super-unrealistic

[Ozric]

Knock it off please.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Not entirely sure why my post (which I started writing before you posted this) pointing out some obvious flaming was deleted, while the flaming is allowed to continue.

Meh such is the way of things I guess. The point about the OP not even having come back after lighting the fuse still remains valid though.

 

[CMDR Mansoul]

I agree that speed limit make for better combat and ship to ship interaction in general. But the speed limit should relate directly to what the maximum acceleration of each ship would be in true newtonian flight.

On the other hand of the fun vs realistic argument, what really ruins my fun is the lack of a mode of flight with thruster assist off and rotational assist on.

And the yaw crippling.

Please FD, I wanted space ships, not planes. (still, I played for a year and got the lifetime pass)

Keep the blue zone and the speed limit, give me proper yaw and proper mouse rotation with free thrusters.

 

[Viajero]

*Mod hat off

No, I remember my own fights, as well as the Video part specifically entitled "How to do it" - which showed everything "wrong" a.k.a Sub-Optimal with it from a combat experience.
Might as well park the ships next to each other and tank it out without moving (= the same as having no relative motion to each other).
"Sitting Duck Warfare" I like to call Newtonian rubber-banding, which is still easily visible in many FA off fight Videos that display very similar shortcomings of the newtonian fight model as expected.

But as said, some folks liked that alot (personal taste requires no justification), so no reason for a flak jacket

Me, I prefer the artificial "Flight Sim" mechanics over Newtonian rubber-banding, static tanking or a 14000m/sec fly-by any day.
(I'd still like to see a Newtonian High Intensity Conflict Zone evolve into 1v1's spread out over 10000km within 15 Minutes into the fight - just for kicks *g*)

Well, the full newtonian main gameplay weakness imho is not the stationary turret potential. As long as you design in "time to target" proyectile based weapons and not just hitscan you ll always have a reason/need to actually move around, so no. Turrets in space do not need to be stationary to become turrets.

The main issue in full newtonian I think is related to the fact that turning rates in any dimension are typically so fast that a pilot can be aiming at any point of space he desires in no time. And this completely negates the whole point of maneuvering skill ceiling in dogfights altogether relegating combat in space to a purely aiming and tanking exercise that is much more akin to an FPS game than a "flight sim" one.

Mistakes in maneuvering, i.e. too fast an acceleration there, too slow of a break here, too much or too little of a turn there etc, need to have a big enough time window to be punished by your opponent with regards to "time to kill" parameters in the game. And hence the slow(er) rates in ED. If you can recover in no time from your orientation or speed mistake, you kill the maneuvering gameplay. It all becomes point and shoot.

I wont even mention the issue of non cap combat speeds because that is by the by.

 

[micky1984]

had the same problem when someone said that the black holes were not realistic! NO one has ever seen a black hole ever ! just the effects they cause so you have no comparision to claim its not realistic. its the same with this question when you have travelled at light speed and above or flown a combat space ship then you can have a refference point to make claims about reality.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Is the complaint here that the way imaginary space ships 'fly' isn't realistic?

 

[Ozric]

Is the complaint here that the way imaginary space ships 'fly' isn't realistic?

My complaint is, disregarding the many others, that the original discussion about this ran to 101 pages. Do we really need another one?

 

[Robert Maynard]

I agree that speed limit make for better combat and ship to ship interaction in general. But the speed limit should relate directly to what the maximum acceleration of each ship would be in true newtonian flight.

On the other hand of the fun vs realistic argument, what really ruins my fun is the lack of a mode of flight with thruster assist off and rotational assist on.

And the yaw crippling.

Please FD, I wanted space ships, not planes. (still, I played for a year and got the lifetime pass)

Keep the blue zone and the speed limit, give me proper yaw and proper mouse rotation with free thrusters.

Mike talked about this a long time ago:

Indeed, a request is just that. We don't have to do anything if we don't want to but that doesn't mean we didn't read and consider the request. Suffice to say a low yaw rate is a fundamental part of our games aesthetics and a corner stone to our flight model that we at frontier like the way it is. We're not changing it, for to do so would be to compromise our own vision for what Elite: Dangerous is and what it's going to be. I don't give a damn what all the other space games have done in the past, nor do I care that our yaw rates are apparently even slower than a plane's is (though every time I've tried doing a pure yaw turn in IL-2 I've stalled my plane before I got anything that even resembled a steady and fast turn rate). Fast yaw and pitch in a space game is a video game trope of the highest order along with banner arrows sliding around the screen and compasses telling you where to fly all the time. I'm almost certain that other developers just implement those features because they've been so prevalent rather than actually reassessing whether the game needed them or could be even better without them! We found for example that the compass that pointed you towards your target at all times made combat too easy to end in stalemate of circling. As soon as we tried removing it all of a sudden it was more exciting to fight someone because they could give you the slip whilst you weren't glancing at your sensors and even if you did pay attention to the sensors the difference in the way the information is presented can still mean you don't quite stay on the target's tail perfectly, again providing more opportunities for them to turn the tide of the battle.

Suffice to say we wanted Elite to feel like star wars in terms of how the ships move by banking/rolling and pitching through manoeuvres opposed to the yaw and pitch based FPS style movement most other space games offered (where roll plays little or no part). That limitation to having to do your main directional change manoeuvring by pitching makes the flight path taken to be more cinematic and means a skilled player can predict the manoeuvres of an opponent in advanced by observing their current roll position relative to themselves only. So long as they match the roll quickly enough they can always follow through the inevitable pitch manoeuvre effectively and maintain the chase. If the target could yaw or pitch effectively then it's much harder to assess what they're going to do as they're current roll position doesn't really matter any more.

Finally realism has played no part whatsoever in any of our design discussions about the flight model. We don't care what would be realistic as we only care what the game play experience is when flying these ships and so far we feel we're hitting the right notes for the majority of our audience.

 

[Boomer Kay]

And there's a reason why it's "cinematic"; it looks good - on a cinema screen, in third party view, with the static audience being the third party

In a newtonian universe, noone is static.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

In a newtonian universe, noone is static.

See it's all relative....

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

*Mod hat off



Well, the full newtonian main gameplay weakness imho is not the stationary turret potential. As long as you design in "time to target" proyectile based weapons and not just hitscan you ll always have a reason/need to actually move around, so no. Turrets in space do not need to be stationary to become turrets.

The main issue in full newtonian I think is related to the fact that turning rates in any dimension are typically so fast that a pilot can be aiming at any point of space he desires in no time. And this completely negates the whole point of maneuvering skill ceiling in dogfights altogether relegating combat in space to a purely aiming and tanking exercise that is much more akin to an FPS game than a "flight sim" one.

Mistakes in maneuvering, i.e. too fast an acceleration there, too slow of a break here, too much or too little of a turn there etc, need to have a big enough time window to be punished by your opponent with regards to "time to kill" parameters in the game. And hence the slow(er) rates in ED. If you can recover in no time from your orientation or speed mistake, you kill the maneuvering gameplay. It all becomes point and shoot.

I wont even mention the issue of non cap combat speeds because that is by the by.

Can you not adress that with weapon range? I'd like to refer again to I-War. It didn't feel like point and shoot.

Anyway, the design decision for ED is done and it it works out all right. The only thing I do not like about the fight model is the lack of damping of PYR axis in FA Off. Why is that?

 

[Vingtetun]

And that is why you lose.

Mike Evans wins for the THIRD YEAR RUNNING on 'acerbic post of the year'.

There was a time when such epic posts were a daily affair.

We need more Evans on the forum!

 

[777Driver]

The only thing I do not like about the fight model is the lack of damping of PYR axis in FA Off. Why is that?

Why do you need automatic dampening in PYR? The whole point of FA-OFF is to give us (near) full control, dampening is provided by grey matter, no interference from the machine.

 

[Vingtetun]

Why do you need automatic dampening in PYR? The whole point of FA-OFF is to give us full control, dampening is provided by grey matter, no interference from the machine.

Indeed. Dampening would be a mechanic that assists your flight and therefore with the flight assist off.... it would be off?

 

[777Driver]

Indeed. Dampening would be a mechanic that assists you flight and therefore with the flight assist off.... it would be off?

Yes, stabilization is completely manual across yaw/pitch/roll with FA-OFF, second nature once you get to grips with it. I certainly wouldn't want the ship interfering.

 

[Tekkarath]

Wall of text to ask a very simple question.

The answer is that if ships used a real physics model for flight the game would be unplayable. Combat would simply be an incredibly high speed joust, with a long wait then a tiny moment of terror then rinse and repeat.

People keep saying this but it's complete <AHEM>, Frontier Elite II had a realistic flight model and the dogfights were insanely fun. Certainly more fun than two ships slowly turning in space and shooting at each others power plants.

 

[lysan]

Is it a game or a sim? I'd say it tries to be both but ends up being neither.

As for the OP, I hear you, but I'm very satisfied with how the flight mechanics work. It's definitely the best aspect of the game and FD nailed it tbh.

Well, ED is a multi headed beast.

Simulation of the galaxy as far as we know, give or take = SIM

Space flight = Game, added some SIM elements
Surface flight = Game, however here I would like it to be more like a flight SIM in some of the game play.

1. Approaching the settlements are just to simple in my opinion, flight zones and actual routes into your landing pad should be more fleshed out.
2. Leaving high G worlds are too easy, maybe some kind of mechanic allowing for a maxed out truster burn to leave a planet, thus building up heat during the burn out phase. Same goes entering a high G world.

Then again, we also need a way to jump to other points in the same system. If you discover a new star within the system you can't jump to it, this is kind of weird and would help the game a lot if you could aim towards a star and jump to it.

 

[MagicTofu]

People keep saying this but it's complete <AHEM>, Frontier Elite II had a realistic flight model and the dogfights were insanely fun. Certainly more fun than two ships slowly turning in space and shooting at each others power plants.

Some dogfights were fun in Elite II, but I personally find them immensely more enjoyable in E: D, and I don't particularly miss those high-speed encounters where the enemy closed in super fast leaving about 1 second to take a single shot, them watching him getting 100km away before he could manage to turn around for another pass, until I got a lucky shot, or he got extremely unlucky and splattered his ship against my clipper's shields.

 

[bamber]

For a space sim I will allow some breakage of physics, like to achieve FTL.

But why should regular, sub-light-speed travel have ridiculously unrealistic physics? It's just stupid. I don't understand why a space sim like this, which seems to try pretty hard to have realism, would totally neglect physics when it comes to accelleration and velocity.

Case in point: ships all have a maximim velocity. That's idiotic. That's not how space ships work.

If a space ship starts off at fixed point A and accelerates at 10m/s^2 in a constant direction away from A, then its speed relative to point A will purely be a function of time. Until you get into the territory of relativistic speeds, where length contraction is a thing, that 10m/s^2 would continue stacking and stacking and stacking.

However in ED, ships all top out at some max speed, then even if you boost, you slow back down again after boosting. What is causing you to slow back down?! There is no air resistance in space. There is no friction. No current. Unless God has you in a tractor beam, or you yourself are accelerating or decelerating in a particular direction, then you should never ever change velocity either faster or slower.

And why is there a magic brick-wall top speed for ships? That is so dumb. What mystical force is preventing them from going faster...?

And what is the displayed speed shown relative to, anyway? It seems to be relative to the nearest asteroid or planet surface, but we all know that asteroids and planets are by no means stationary objects. They are all moving very quickly indeed around their host star... so when I drop out of supercruise in an asteroid belt, now I am moving thousands of kilometers per second faster relative to the star then when I was right in front of it. So there really is no top speed, really, there's just what the game engine artificially imposes relative to the local coordinate space.

But why? Was this some kind of programming difficulty that just couldn't be got around? If so I'd love to hear a technical explanation as to why, since I think FD could be excused for this if their reason is sound.

Fly between two stations and turn off Flight assist and also rotational correction ( so you don't have help in space stations)

Then tell me why its a good idea to have a realistic Newtonian flight model

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Indeed. Dampening would be a mechanic that assists your flight and therefore with the flight assist off.... it would be off?

Lol, yeah - it's just I fight the controls more than I make use of FA off. It's unneccessary complicated for sustained FA off flight. At least with my joystick.

 

[Komemiute]

Dear OP, you have started the nine thousand five hundred and thirty first thread on this exact topic. It won't go well. Enjoy your stay. You may also be interested in Rogue System.

True DAT!